As Once Upon A Time Releases The Kraken, Jafar Proves Himself A Typically Dumb Villain

As balance, Jasmine is too nice for her own good, so there's that. Anyone else need a hug?

So Hook is stuck on Nemo's submarine, and it turns out the only way he can get back to Emma is…kraken's blood. Because of course something that requires killing a writhing, miserable sea creature stands between Killian and redemption. Yay!

The good news is that Jasmine's around, searching for Agrabah with Aladdin (it totally makes sense, shut up). She screws up Killian's attempts to kill a kraken, what with the floating in the water and swatting at it, but it's all good because, even though the major arc is about Emma and Hook and the threat of Gideon, this episode is all about Jasmine, who is super-nice even though her life has been sucking hard lately, poor duck.

Back in Agrabah, Jasmine wanted to marry for love, which seemed surprisingly hard to do. The men who showed up asking for her hand couldn't take their eyes off the fancypants ring the king was using as a dowry, but it made no difference to Jasmine's dad. Sometimes you have to do right by your kingdom! Unless, of course, doing the right thing means marrying Jafar, which is really a bridge too far for most people.

Back on the submarine, Aladdin pesters Hook for girl advice, because obviously he's in a great state of mind to offer counsel, and Jasmine uses one of her wishes to transport all occupants to a nearby island after the kraken's flailing limbs messed up the seal lock or some such submarine-type problem. Aladdin warns her that you never get the wish you expect, which so far has seemed true (when she wished to get Agrabah back, she ended up in the Enchanted Forest), but there's no time to worry about consequences. It's off to Hangman's Island!

And then, Nemo and Hook's brother need to go back to the submarine, so it's just Hook, Jasmine, and Aladdin, which is an uncomfortable threesome to be sure. They find a freaky tiki hut stuffed with corkscrews, which to me seems to indicate pirate, but Jasmine knows who lives inside -- it's Ariel! Because she's a creepy hoarder!

There's a lot of flipping back and forth in time, which allows us to learn that Jafar never wanted to marry Jasmine or rule Agrabah, but was just a dick. I mean really, that was about it. But that's not the real reason we should hate Jafar. His primary problem is that he's essentially a plot device who can't bring himself to shut up when it would really be in his best interest.

While Ariel manages to find a jar in her collection which contains Jafar (this completely makes sense, shut up), you would think him being relegated to genie status would mean all is right in the world. Jasmine can make him free Agrabah, then get him to wash the dishes. But no, it's never that simple. For some reason, it's easy as pie for Jafar to toss off the bounds of geniedom, curse everyone but Jasmine with a sleeping spell, and then do anything he wants! Except he doesn't, because he admits he's already completely ruined Jasmine's life, so why bother? Oh, except he should stick around to tell her how much her friends suck. That's always a good thing.

He also needs to take a few moments to inform Jasmine that her handy-dandy ring actually has all of Agrabah in it, so she did get her wish granted before. She just has to figure out how to free them, which Jafar says is impossible, but when do bad guys ever get it right? Jafar could book out at any moment, but he just wants to taunt Jasmine long enough for her to remember she has a vial of magic red stuff in her purse that she can throw at him. Twice, so that it eventually breaks and turns him into a screaming walking stick. Seriously, Jafar. As bad guys go, you do not go the extra mile. You even gave Jasmine ten minutes to chat with Ariel before you ruined her life the first time. Ten minutes! What decent bad guy does that? Thanks for the exposition, though!

Back in Storybrooke, Regina and Snow decide it would be best to get Emma sloshy, weepy drunk to get over Hook, and it's good to know that traditions like that transcend our present world and seep into reformed storybook characters, too. Even though Snow starts a knife fight with a bunch of Vikings and Regina fails to get Emma to open up, you know who does? The bartender! And the bartender is Aesop. Except he's not, because it's really Gideon in disguise.

Emma only learns this after Hook gets a call on Ariel's magic shell-phone cross-realm system, so she's good and teary by the time Gideon rolls up. Hopefully she comes up with a way to sidestep his request (he wants to kill the Black Fairy) and discover some tricky magic the way Jasmine does. To un-miniaturize Agrabah, she sucks face with Aladdin. That's it. Like she needed an excuse.